The Saline Reporter
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Hornets in 'upper echelon' at EMU
Round 3 performance makes difference in second home invite
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: February 21, 2008
If the Saline boys' swim team can continue to build on its performance at Saturday's Michigan Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association meet (a statewide, all-division copetition held at Eastern Michigan that serves as a preview to the state meet), head coach Todd Brunty thinks the Hornets should be more than ready when the actual state meet arrives March 7.
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"We did pretty well. We came real close to having best swims across the board on our relays," Brunty said. "That's what you want: the best times against the best competition. These are the same teams we've swam (against) all year. Brother Rice, Pioneer, Livonia-Stevenson — we showed we're in that upper echelon.
"We cracked the top 10 (at the state meet) last year and we don't want to fall out again."
No team scores are kept at the MISCA meet, but the Hornets shone with season-best times in all three of their relays, finishing as high as seventh.
Justin Duong, Matt DeFauw, Jake Engelmeier, and Alex Wu posted that finish by swimming 1:41.50 in the 200-yard medley relay. Wu, Duong, Engelmeier and Daniel Kung combined to take ninth in the 200 freestyle relay in 1:31.70, and Duong, Engelmeier, Wu and Sam Wittig swam 3:22.89, a season-best drop of nearly a second-and-a-half, in the 400 freestyle relay.
Duong recorded Saline's best individual finish with a 55.44 in the 100 backstroke, which was good for fifth. The Hornets' other top-10 performance came on the diving board, where junior Joel Chambers placed eighth with a score of 343.75, the third-best showing by a Division 1 diver at the meet. Sophomore Hank Remenapp also outperformed his seed by taking 26th with a score of 276.10.
"They're something a lot of other teams don't have," Brunty said of the Hornet divers. "They're a big piece of the puzzle."
Even outside the top 10, Saline shone with several swimmers posting their best times of the season.
DeFauw and Mike Fisher took 14th and 16th in the 100 breaststroke in times of 1:03.99 and 1:04.07, respectively, both less than 0.2 seconds from the state qualifying time in the event. Fisher also shaved more than a second from his season-best time in taking 23rd in the 200 individual medley in 2:08.46, as did Mike Hughes in swimming his 31st-place 1:53.19 in the 200 freestyle.
Freshman Brad Frost cut nearly three seconds off his personal best by swimming 5:14.97 in the 500 freestyle, which was good for 46th. Kung also set a season-low with a 33rd-place time of 51.42 in the 100 freestyle.
Brunty said that one big plus of swimming the MISCA meet is getting freshmen like Frost and other swimmers that haven't participated in the state meet before some valuable experience.
"They've all swam big meets before, but high school is a little different ball game," Brunty said. "That's the real value of this meet — learning how to handle ourselves at a meet this size, how to warm up in the big pool alongside a hundred other swimmers, that kind of thing.
"They learn how big a mistake is. In a meet like this, if you make a mistake you're not going from second to third, you're going from top 20 to top 40."
Brunty hopes the experience will pay off not only at states, but at this week's critical Southeastern Conference meet at Pioneer. The meet is the Hornets' last chance to make state cuts, as well as an opportunity to show again that the gap between themselves and powers like Pioneer is shrinking.
"This meet has been our focus all year," Brunty said. "We're really happy with where we are entering this week. We're going to get a lot of rest. Our goal is to have 100 percent best swims, across the board. If we do that, we should be pretty competitive."
Other swims from the MISCA meet included Engelmeier (23rd, 1:51.84) and Wittig (34th, 1:53.74) in the 200 freestyle; Adam Pummell (51st, 2:13.81) in the 200 IM; Wu (26th, 23.09) and Kung (44th, 23.54) in the 50 freestyle; Andrew Krieber (51st, 59.31) and Hughes (54th, 59.60) in the 100 butterfly; Travis Littlejohn (54th, 5:20.26) in the 500 freestyle; Pummell (36th, 1:00.91) in the 100 backstroke; and Wittig (40th, 1:06.60) and Littlejohn (54th, 1:09.93) in the 100 breaststroke.
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